Photoplay (Jan 1921)

^ »& --Vy. ;*F ; ipi A Belle of Bogota South American ancestry endowed Bebe Daniels with her personality and "background. " By JOAN JORDAN NOW that she has climbed the ladder into the Milky Way where she shines — a blazing, intensely bright little star amid its many luminaries — they are going to call Bebe Daniels "the good little bad girl." But to me she always has been and always will be "the girl with the background." There are girls who remind you of Tanagra statuettes, daintily aloof and isolated, or of splendid Rubens beauties sufficient unto themselves; or comet-like girls simply marking a swift, unattached trail across the sky of motion pictures. There are lovely women who somehow suggest an American beauty on its single stalk, stripped of even its leaves, instead of a rose in a garden or in a silver vase. But Bebe Daniels, both in her vivid screen portrayals and her no less vivid private self, seems as rich in background as a Rembrandt. Very clever women in history have often, by long and arduous and sometimes devious ways, established a sort of background for themselves. Bebe, I imagine, was born with hers, and it is more a matter of personality and character, mannerisms and expressions than of surroundings or even associations. No matter what she wears, or even if, as will happen, she wears almost nothing at all, one sees behind her, streets filled with bright, waving flags, blazing beneath tropical sunshine; streets overhung with balconies where dusky-haired maidens, with scarlet roses held between still more scarlet lips, lean down in answer to the luring strains of a guitar. This background gives Bebe Daniels that insouciance, that feminine insolence that more than any other one thing has brought her stardom, the latest' of the Realart headliners. You may not consider her beautiful, but she has the eyes of a Mona Lisa and the swaying walk of a Carmen, so it wouldn't matter if the rest of her were as ugly as Caliban. "The good little bad girl." Well, women will never believe her good and men will never believe her bad, so there you are. The woman doesn't live who can honestly feel perfectly happy when she looks at eyes like Bebe Daniels', that's all. We aren't made that way. She has the eyes of a Mona Lisa and the swaying walk of a Carmen. Her name is really Bebe. Her grandmamma named her. And about grandmamma — She had a lot to do, no doubt, with that background. For grandmamma was. a famous South American beauty and heiress, many moons ago. Her father was the Governor of Bogota. And the beautiful heiress, only just in her teens, ran away and married the handsome young American consul to the United States of Colombia. It was a famous romance, one of the first of its kind, a romance that has since been sung again and again by poet and novelist and short story master. So it isn*t strange that Bebe has a background of romance. She is a naive young person, with a rippling flow of language not entirely dissociated from her hereditary Spanish, and an appealing way beneath the hauteur which made her so attractive in Cecil de Mille's masterpiece. "Why Change Your Wife?" She began her career twelve years ago at the age of seven with Selig in a picture called "The Common Enemy." Los Angeles and Hollywood, where she is now working at the Lasky studio, are full of people who remember her when she was a promising child actress. She has played in Ibsen. Shakespeare, Maeterlinck, and many other classics. "I'm so glad I am a star I can hardly tell you about it." she said. "I love it. I either love or hate thincs. you know. I love acting. I liked my comedies with Harold Lloyd, but I love my serious work best. I love music most of anything in the world — the kind of music that makes me feel. " 'The good little bad girl?' Well, they say there are four kinds of women, bad women and good women, and good bad women and bad good women, so — "